


Nothing Sweet About Me

by grayimperia



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 14:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14673336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: Ouma tastes like candy. Momota tastes like blood.Or Momota and Ouma meet three times.





	Nothing Sweet About Me

_before_

 

Ouma writes in his diary that he deserves better. He deserves better than to have to brush the dirt he was pushed into today off of his uniform, better than to have to even go to a school where he wears such a horridly plain uniform, better than everything around him in this rotten world. 

Ouma shoves his diary into the bottom of his bag because he tells himself he doesn’t want a repeat of the school’s delinquent snatching it out of his hands to toss into a particularly muddy puddle. Ouma puts it away into the depths of his bag in the same movement he pulls hard candy out. 

He’s overly secretive and careful in his gestures, but no one pays attention. Ouma bitterly thinks that no one ever pays attention even as his shoulders slump. The delinquent bothering to acknowledge his existence the day he had to buy a new diary was almost exhilarating in retrospect. 

Ouma spends the school day the same way he spends every day—shrinking under stares, keeping his head down, and cracking his teeth on hard candy just for the sake of it.

Everything in his world is fundamentally broken. But he’s not special for thinking like that. That’s just the way the world is.

He carefully sidesteps mud puddles on his way home, and he spies the delinquent who skipped school today trying to stay dry in the drizzling weather under the slight ledge of a building. Ouma pauses to watch him nurse his cigarette and two, then three, then four more figures swim into focus, all smoking, all in ugly uniforms, all trying to stay dry. 

Ouma has to walk past them to get home. Something about that—something about the smell of smoke becoming stronger and stronger as he draws closer—is invigorating. 

The rat doesn’t always run from the cat. Sometimes it walks right by it, sees its whiskers, hears it hiss and is almost hypnotized by the way it recoils from the water. One of the others—all blended together in an ugly gray haze—calls his name to taunt him for standing where the rain collects in big drops on the ledge above.

Momota. It’s cute like a chime or a child’s song. Ouma pops another candy into his mouth. Momota’s friends don’t notice. Momota doesn’t notice. 

He walks by unharmed. There’s something perversely disappointing about that. Even when he was right next to the smoke, the candy still tasted sweet. There’s something even more disappointing about that. 

-

Ouma’s probably doing nothing to improve Momota’s class attendance when he rushes up behind him the next day to rip his schoolbag out of his unsuspecting grip and take off with it at a dead sprint. 

He hears cursing and thundering footsteps behind him immediately, and the other students part for him, all too aware of what fate likely meets the poor soul stupid—or bold—enough to mess with a boy known for bringing a bat with him to class. 

Ouma tears it open as he runs, tossing papers and notebooks by the fistfuls out behind him, and they rain down in a flurry that makes Momota’s threats increase in violence. 

Ouma has the advantage of knowing the school grounds far better, and it’s not long until he’s charging through the gardening club’s flowerbeds and around the back of the building. The paper trail gets thinner and thinner as he runs low on possessions to toss to the ground, and stops altogether when Ouma’s hand reaches into the bag and comes out with a bottle of pills. 

He pauses, staring at it, heart hammering hard in his chest, Momota’s distant curses echoing vaguely in the background. It’s medicine, he realizes. Medicine for something serious. Momota-kun is sick.

Ouma sits down with the impassive brick walls of the school supporting him. He digs his hand into Momota’s bag again, searching this time, and finds cigarettes. Another search finds a lighter. Ouma’s never smoked in his life before, but Momota’s voice seems to draw closer and closer, and if rumors are to be believed, his life may very well end soon.

It doesn’t taste good. He feels dizzy after one inhale, and Momota finally appears to loom over him when he’s coughing his lungs out. 

Momota’s breathing hard, too. He still rips the cigarette out of Ouma’s hand. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Just how badly do you want me to beat the shit out of you?”

He loves it in theory, but Ouma can’t help the timidity that overtakes him when confronted with actual danger. His voice shakes as he reaches for the pill bottle and throws it so it bounces off of Momota’s chest. “L-Like you could do a-anything. I-I always knew you were pathetic but j-just how—”

That gets him a fist pulling him up by the front of his shirt and the previously supportive wall pressed hard against his back. Momota’s face is close, and his breath smells like smoke and something bitter. Ouma places the scent as blood while Momota swears at him. “—lucky if you can even fucking think about trying to say that shit to my face again after I’m done with you.”

Ouma fumbles awkwardly in his position but still manages to pull a hard candy out of his pocket. Momota’s eyes widen at the brightly colored wrapper when he holds it up to him. “W-Want one?” he says. “F-Figured a jawbreaker w-would be appropriate.”

Ouma tries to go for a punch line, but pressing his lips to Momota’s cheek seems to not be in the cards. 

He still smirks. Momota’s fist still hurts. 

He has a black eye when he auditions for DanganRonpa, but he thinks that adds to his charm. Ouma remembers throwing a wadded up DanganRonpa flier from the depths of Momota’s bag up into the air. 

His only regret is that he won’t be able to see the look on Momota’s face when he makes it on to the show while he’s stuck with his cigarettes and his pills and whatever other sick things the world throws at him. 

-

_during_

 

Momota finally stops running when his throat starts to burn. Ouma’s somewhere in the school with the keycard. Momota’s fighting not to slump into a pile on the floor. 

He paces back and forth, taking steadying breath and abandoning any hope of actually accomplishing his goal. There’s no sound in the empty hall except his hoarse breathing. In, out, burn, swallow down the bile, pretend his stomach isn’t twisting itself over and over into increasingly tight knots. 

He’s been through this enough times that he’s starting to get a pattern down. Momota knows that’s probably a really bad sign, but it means the episode passes in relative ease. Then he hears the soft clicks of shoes behind him and spins on his heel to see Ouma suddenly in his face. 

Momota starts backwards, arms wind milling to catch himself and bumping painfully against the vine covered wall next to him. Ouma has his own arms folded behind his head even when he tilts it to stare at him nonchalantly. “Momota-chan,” he drawls. “The point of tag is that you chase after me. I know you’re dumb, but did you really forget something as simple as that?”

Momota glares at him, ready to spit out whatever comeback comes to him first when he feels the burning again, something toxic threatening to boil up and out of his throat if he opens his mouth. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his teeth instead. Momota can feel Ouma’s curious eyes on him as he storms past him without a word. The last thing he needs is Ouma, of all people, to see him with blood dripping down his chin. He hears Ouma’s shoes clicking behind him again, and his voice rambling, “Now I’m being ignored completely? Man, Momota-chan, this is the worst date ever. First you stop playing with me without a word, then you throw a hissy fit because you were losing—you know you have always struck me as a sore loser, Momota-chan, but to just run off in the middle of a game… Well not really ‘run,’ more limp, I guess—”

He keeps going even when Momota reaches his destination of the boys’ bathroom, recovered enough by the journey’s end to snap, “you gonna follow me into the goddamn bathroom?”

Ouma smiles oddly at him. “Momota-chan,” he says, reaching into his pocket to pull out the forgotten keycard. “Weren’t you supposed to be the one following me?”

Momota lunges for it. Ouma darts out of his grasp. He starts to run again, but Momota’s stomach tightens to tell him he can’t follow. Ouma’s speeded around a corner, and Momota feels a sick relief that he’s not there to see his retreat as he hurries to go cough up blood in the privacy of one of the bathroom stalls. 

When he finishes the too familiar process of coughing and disposing of the evidence and emerges from the bathroom, still brushing his mouth off with the back of his hand, Ouma’s waiting outside, rocking on his heels. “Standing me up again,” he says. “Geeze, how rude can you be, Momota-chan?”

Momota furrows his brow. “Were you actually just waiting here the whole time? That’s kinda cree—”

Ouma holds out a hand to silence him, and Momota frowns but complies. Ouma says, “before you go any further, Momota-chan, I just want you to know that I hid the keycard somewhere on my body. You can still have it if you want, but—”

“Sh-Shut up!” Momota says, feeling his face burning instead of his throat this time. “Quit fucking lying!”

“It’s not that much of a lie,” Ouma says. “The keycard is safely hidden somewhere Momota-chan will never go, _and_ I do have something precious on me.”

Momota stares at him warily. Very carefully he says down to Ouma’s grinning face, “You’re making fun of me.”

“Me?” Ouma gasps. “Would I ever make fun of my dearest Momota-chan? That’s a pretty serious accusation, and here,” he starts to sniffle, “I was gonna give him a present out of the kindness of my heart…”

“Whatever it is,” Momota says. “I don’t want it.”

“Nonsense,” Ouma chirps. “Everyone loves bubblegum. I know it really helps hotheads calm down, so it’s probably extra good for you.”

Momota opens his mouth to reject any gift from Ouma on principle when he trips over the bizarre logic before him. “What? I’ve literally never heard of that—quit making shit up.”

Ouma puffs out his cheeks. “I am not making anything up. Bubblegum totally helps people like you with anger management.”

“No, it doesn’t. And I do not have anger management issues!”

“You do, and it totally does!”

“It does not!”

“It does too!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

Momota runs a hand through his hair. “No, it fucking doesn’t, and this is stupid.”

“I agree with one of those things,” Ouma says, skipping over to brandish a brightly colored package at him. “Gum? It’s mint flavored.”

Momota scowls. “You really think I’m gonna accept that after everything we just talked about?”

“Stranger things have been known to happen,” Ouma says. “Come on, this is me being a nice guy here. No lies, no tricks, just one friend helping another.”

Momota regards him warily, but, still, for better or worse he’s never been one to turn down an extended hand, even if he’s all too aware it might be carrying a joybuzzer. He says, “Fine, but you eat one first.”

Ouma sighs. “So distrustful.” He takes a piece without protest, however, and pops it into his mouth with little fanfare, letting the silvery wrapper flutter to the ground. “See? My present is as harmless as little old me.”

Momota’s still dubious, and Ouma leans on his tiptoes to shove the package closer to Momota’s face. “C’mon. C’mooooon. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mo—”

“Fine, fine! Just fucking quit it!” 

Ouma cheers. It tastes stark and artificial but is distinctly mint instead of hot sauce or rotten eggs or whatever gag flavor Momota imagines Ouma could somehow get his hands on. 

It’s normal. It’s not a trick. Momota can hardly believe it’s not a trick as Ouma beams up at him, blowing bubbles and giggling to himself. “You know,” Ouma says. “I do have to give it to Monokuma that he did a great job stocking the store with candy. I think I might just eat only candy until we get out of here.”

Momota snorts. “Sure, if you want all your teeth to rot, knock yourself out.”

“Maybe it’s not great in the long term, but you’re too farsighted, Momota-chan! Think of the short term—live in the moment.”

“I’m the last guy you gotta tell that to,” Momota says. He grins, pressing his fists together and feeling proud for the first time in their conversation. “Having goals and making every moment count—that’s how I’ve always lived my life.”

Ouma gives him an odd look. “Is it now?”

“Wha—course it is! You know who you’re talking to, right?”

“I do,” Ouma says. “Which is why I said I’m gonna eat candy every day until I die because that might happen tomorrow!”

“Don’t say shit like that,” Momota says. “You’re not gonna die.”

Ouma laughs. “So I’m going to live forever? Hmm, that might get boring after a while, though. I guess I just think even a short life is meaningful if you live it right.” It’s such a positive statement, but there’s something off putting in his grin. “What do you think about that, Momota-chan?”

Momota knows he’s being tested, but whatever answer Ouma’s looking for eludes him. “What do you mean ‘what do I think?’ Who wouldn’t think that?”

“Good question.”

Ouma tosses the rest of the pack of gum at him, and Momota fumbles to catch it. Ouma says, “You should hold on to that. My gift to you. And it’ll probably be really useful since, you know, bubblegum’s always helped me whenever I have bad breath.” He smirks, leaning even closer to his face than before. “Though I never had to try and cover up blood, so who knows.”

Momota’s eyes widen. “You—” 

Ouma darts forward for half a second before running. He disappears, and it’s only in his wake that Momota realizes he kissed his cheek. 

Momota stands there alone, before feeling something familiar bubbling up in his throat, and his chest blooms with fire anew. 

-

_after_

 

The game was a lie. The Momota before the game faked his medical examination. Going off his medication to enter a virtual killing game played havoc on his health, but he lives in a world where the technology exists to put sixteen children into a virtual world for fun. And that same world has the technology to save him, even if it means he’s hospitalized long after the others are free to walk the streets again.

He remembers coughing. His entire world seemed to revolve around him coughing on something. Though Momota supposes that’s over now. The old him managed to pick up a smoking addiction, and the withdrawal in the hospital puts all his nerves on edge—of course what’s the disease and what’s the lack of cigarettes bleed together into an ugly, aggravating mess. 

Momota remembers being angry at the world before the game. He’s angry at the world now. He leans back into his uncomfortable hospital bed pillow and thinks just how little has changed. The only thing Team DanganRonpa did to him was convince him he had a future for a few weeks. 

-

Ouma isn’t sure if his life was ruined or fixed. 

Everyone pays attention to him now. Everywhere he goes, he gets stopped—pictures of himself and ugly words throw in an indiscriminate mess in his face every time he gets stopped trying to go to school. 

Momota Kaito went to his school, but he’s in the hospital now. The teachers aren’t allowed to talk about DanganRonpa or the paparazzi outside or that two of their students were broadcasted killing each other. Ouma’s back to shrinking from stares and hunching in on himself, so, really, nothing’s changed. 

His house gets vandalized sometimes by diehard fans of the show still furious for his role in ending the games. Ouma cleans up the broken glass that fluttered to the floor when a rock soared through his window. His face reflects back at him in pieces, and he can’t help but absently trace over the bruising lingering on his face from before his audition.

Momota’s in the hospital. Some of the others have been to see him. Ouma wants to avoid the others. Every step he takes there, he’s half convinced one of his victims—Gonta, Iruma, or anyone else he wronged even if he didn’t take their life—is going to jump out at him as if they’re the monster in this story. 

He’s been a monster for a long time. His life has been toxic for a long time. If he wants to suck out the poison, he knows what he needs to do. 

The Ouma in the game wouldn’t have done anything. The him before would have seen the mess of his life and add more and more poison until he was drowning in its sweetness. 

And the amalgamation of the two idles in the hospital gift shop—chewing on his lip because candy makes him sick now—knowing that people buy presents when their friends are sick. 

Momota’s not his friend. Momota’s his victim. Or maybe Ouma’s the victim. Team DanganRonpa said he was the victim when they discovered whose virtual body was smashed beyond recognition. Ouma thinks of the poison and bites his lip and spends his prize money on flowers and a huge stuffed animal or two. 

A nurse smiling at him struggling under the weight of his gifts takes him to Momota and knocks softly on his door to tell him he has a visitor. Momota stares at him, and he keeps staring at him even when the nurse takes the presents from Ouma’s hands to arrange around the room. Ouma sits in a chair next to his bedside, and prepares at Momota to tell him he’s a monster or yell at him to get out when the nurse clicks the door shut to give the two of them some privacy.

Momota says, “You bought me flowers?”

“Everyone likes flowers,” Ouma says.

Momota’s eyebrows knit together. “I guess?”

“In the game,” Ouma says. “Your report card said you like plants. Is that still true or…”

He trails off. Momota presses the heel of his hand to his eyes. “Fuck if I know. You still like… soda or whatever?”

“No,” he says. 

“Oh,” Momota says. Then after a moment, “didn’t happen to bring any cigarettes, did you?”

“Strangely they didn’t sell those in the hospital gift shop,” Ouma says. “Though I still owe you after I stole one from your bag that one time, huh?”

Momota leans further back, all but collapsing on to his pillows. “Forget it.”

Ouma feels his lips twitch into a smile. “I guess you got even back then anyway.”

He feels Momota’s gaze linger around the dark spots still sprinkled like a halo around his eye. “Why are you here?” he asks eventually.

“I don’t know,” Ouma says with a shrug. “I’d say I wanted to see you, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

Momota snorts. “Well, at least I don’t have to hear you say ‘it’s a lie’ anymore. Maybe the game was good for something after all.”

Ouma pouts. “How rude. Lying is still part of my way of life, you know.”

“So you’re still annoying?”

“I brought you flowers and stuffed animals and balloons and you’re bullying me?”

“You didn’t bring me balloons.”

“Psst, Momota-chan that was a lie.”

Momota rolls his eyes but can’t help but smile just a little. It’s nice—the fighting when they’re not actually trying to hurt each other. No one’s out for blood. No one’s out for anything. 

Ouma doesn’t know how many hospital visits it is. Then just regular visits. Then just life. Without the poison, things change. 

The third time he tries to kiss Momota, he doesn’t taste like blood, and Ouma doesn’t taste like candy. 

It’s nothing, and he realizes that’s for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been incredibly busy the past few months but I wanted to write at least one thing for oumota week! And hopefully I should be back to a regular posting schedule starting next month, too!


End file.
